Google Pledges $1 Billion Payment to News Publishers for Content

“Many are quite cynical about Google’s perceived strategy,” said Angela Mills Wade, Executive Director of the council.

“By launching a product, they can dictate terms and conditions, undermine legislation designed to create conditions for a fair negotiation, while claiming they are helping to fund news production.”

The council's members include German publisher Axel Springer and the British unit of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which have been fighting a yearslong battle to get Big Tech giants to pay for news stories appearing on their platforms.

The pressure has been rising over compensation in a number of countries for Google and Facebook.

Read also: Sundar Pichai Joins Other Big Tech CEOs at Key US Antitrust Hearing

Australia's government is drafting a law to make Facebook and Google pay the country's media companies for the news content they use by early October.

Facebook has responded by threatening to block Australian news content rather than pay for it.

In France, Google has refused to show snippets of some stories as it fights government demands for license fees to publishers, as required by a recent European Union directive.

Facebook last year unveiled its own plan to pay US news companies including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today for their headlines — reportedly millions of dollars in some cases.

It also said in 2019 that it was investing $300 million over three years in news initiatives, with a focus on local news partnerships and third-party fact-checking. 

(Writer: Kelvin Chan) 

Source: https://apnews.com/article/brazil-germany-archive-sundar-pichai-50448e57de30a40cdd38cdeddaacf043